


boyish

by heartcondition



Category: NINE PERCENT (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: Crushes, Getting Together, Introspection, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 18:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15225100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartcondition/pseuds/heartcondition
Summary: Xukun feels like just about everything is going to separate him further from Zhengting—even his efforts to draw them only a little bit closer together.





	boyish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrophane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/gifts).



> once again this is not the thing i intended to enter fandom with but love for ash outweighs my True Agendas you know how it is folks
> 
> everyone else i think a lot of the bullshit in this is meta thats wildly specific to like 7 people on my tl so if its not your jam don’t think about it too hard, also npc timeline confuses the hell out of me so this is set rather vaguely btwn end of idol pro and now, even though i know they were in cali for a while
> 
> enjoy !! unbetad as usual so please forgive any glaring mistakes. title is from a hippo campus song of the same name

 

 

 

“Do you mind if I tag along?” Xukun asks.

Zhengting looks over at him from where he’s tugging on his tennis shoes in the landing, bent over past ninety degrees at the waist. He blinks. “Not at all. Sure, come on, come on.”

Zhengting’d been conned into a one man expedition to buy snacks at a corner store on the other side of their residential block by Justin and Chengcheng, though Xukun is certain it was less of an exasperated agreement and more of a deceivingly fond willingness, typical Yuehua style. Zhengting picks up a pair of shoes by the laces and tosses them at Xukun.

“Those aren’t mine,” Xukun says.

“Ack,” Zhengting sputters, reaching to pull the shoes back and replace them with another. “I’m too old to keep track of all of you.” He looks up at Xukun, who’s about to laugh and agree, and with a grimace says, “don’t comment on that.”

“Okay,” Xukun replies easily. “I won’t say you’re old.” He busies himself with his shoelaces, loosening them then pulling tight.

Chengcheng’s head pops out from one of the open doorways, leaving a Chengcheng shaped shadow in the subsequent square of yellow light. “Kunkun,” he says, “Zhengting-ge thinks I have a sugar addiction and he wont buy me what I want—will you pick me up something sweet? Please?”

“And you think eating more sugar is the way to prove me wrong?” Zhengting says, incredulous. Chengcheng sticks his tongue out, then ducks out of the way of the slipper Zhengting throws at him. Justin’s laugh chimes out into the hallway, the sound splattering against the low hum of the action movie they’d been watching. Zhengting make a valiant attempt at resisting a smile, fails immediately. Chengcheng winks at him, disappearing again behind the door.

It had been weird, at first, moving out of the cookie cutter Idol Producer dorms and then moving into these ones—during the inbetween, Xukun hadn’t even unpacked his bags. Weirder, now, without the buffer of thirty other trainees, the additional weight of number one on his shoulders, and the realization he doesn’t know everyone that’s left as well as he’d hoped to, near the end of things, Zhengting holding steady in the top slot of that particular list.

“You coming?” Zhengting says. He’s pulled an atrociously colored knit hat down over his dark hair in the meantime, waiting in the doorway. Xukun takes the sight of him in—sweatpants, the kind of clothes one might sleep in, messy, un-parted bangs—and tries to compartmentalize it somewhere. _Friend_ doesn’t seem exactly right, but at the same time, _stranger_ doesn’t either. _Handsome_ is a different category entirely, but it comes to mind, too.

“Yeah,” Xukun replies, snapping out of it. Of course he’s coming. One of these days he hopes the both of them can feel like nobody even needs to ask.

 

/

 

The way Xukun wishes he could think of it is like this; he came to win, and then he won. The rest should feel equally simple.

Right?

 

/

 

Xukun taps on Zhenting’s shoulder in the freezer aisle, and he startles, jumping away, hand clutching at his heart. “You snuck up on me!” he gripes, sagging against the foggy glass of the refrigerators. “Think of my heart health, would you!”

“I don’t have the energy for that,” Xukun replies, grinning a little. Going from observation, Zhengting responds better to teasing than anything else, if his wide open love for Justin and Chengcheng is anything to go by, so Xukun us trying it out. Disobedience is easy.

Zhengting feigns a twisted, vexed face, hits him lightly on the arm, then turns around to peer into the refrigerators again. Quiet music wafts out from the store’s speakers, lyrics indiscernible and slurring together.

“Do you know what ice cream Chengcheng likes?” Xukun asks idly, opening a fridge door, too. He likes to think he’s pretty close to Chengcheng, but he’s also pretty sure that Zhengting knows his tastes better than anyone else.

Zhengting rifles through a bin of strawberry fruit bars at the bottom of the icy shelves and looks over at Xukun through the frosty glass. “Please don’t indulge him,” he says triedly. Then, with exasperation as he rights himself, “but he likes chocolate. Anything with chocolate.”

Xukun pulls the most sickeningly sweet thing he can find from the freezers in the corner of the store, then trails after Zhengting as he meanders through the aisles, collecting things in his hands in lieu of a basket, balancing them between his forearm and his chest. Xukun tries to commit the things he’s picking up to memory, catalog things under the newly created place for Zhengting in the back of his brain. The idea of knowing Zhengting on paper and nothing more unsettles him, so he’s pushing past it. Ambition for more is a territory Xukun is painfully familiar with.

Xukun grabs a bottle of green tea from a shelf, then circles through the store until he finds Zhengting again at the register. He’s already checking out, handing over his card to be scanned by the sleepy looking cashier in the reader, the image a bit dull against the mosaic of colorful packaging lined up on the walls behind him. He glances over at Xukun.

“You’re not getting anything to eat?” he says, eyes flicking between Chengcheng’s ice cream and the plastic bottle of green tea. “Why’d you wanna come along if you aren’t even hungry? Isn’t there green tea already, back in the house?”

Xukun shrugs. “It’s an apartment in a much larger building, Zhengting, not a house,” he says, eyeing Zhengting’s purchases as they get dumped haphazardly into a plastic bag; white rabbit taffy, hawthorne flakes, a tin jar of wasabi peas, filing them away in a Zhengting shaped space.

Zhengting rolls his eyes at the correction, taking his receipt, but waits beside the counter for Xukun to check out, too. He plays with a stray thread on Xukun’s jacket while he digs in his pocket for the cash, and the categories come back; friend, stranger, bandmate—they’re all lazy half truths. Zhengting hooks his hand around Xukun’s ebow, impatient before Xukun’s even been handed back his change.

“Besides,” Xukun continues, smiling cloyingly. The warmth of Zhengting’s hand pulls, clings, pushes. “You’ll share with me, won’t you?”

 

/

 

Once, on the way home from the first photoshoot the nine of them had together as an official group, Xukun woke up in his seat on the bus to crawling blue darkness, looked across the aisle, past the empty seat next to him, and found Zhengting equally awake. In the memory, Xukun imagines they went over a sunken in storm drain cover or a crumbling pothole in the narrow concrete road, and the jostling woke the both of them, but in truth he can’t be entirely sure.

The bus slept, save for the driver and the white glow of a phone screen radiating out from the front, one lone staff member left to make sure they make it all the way back to their dorms.

Zhengting blinks at him owlishly, the whites of his eyes catching in a streetlight before it whisks away again. Xukun stares back, flusters, looks away.

In the window reflection, he can see Zhengting look at him a little longer before he turns to his own window, too, the shapes fuzzy and blown out, grey colors amplified by the plum dark of nighttime in Beijing behind the glass. He stays staring out the window, forces his eyes past the form of Zhengting’s back, as if there’s anything but more darkness out there or a passing train, sometimes starbursts of headlights as cars turn slowly down one way roads. Xukun looks at his own image, now, squinting it into focus, his face closed but hopeful. Thinks about Zhenting, about himself, always looking carefully, but hardly ever at each other.

When they arrive at the overhang out front of their building, Zhangjing and Yanjun turn around in their seats, reach back, and shake Zhengting awake. Sometime between the pothole and home, he’d already fallen easily back asleep.

 

/

 

“Oh my god,” groans Chengcheng, dropping back against the headrest in defeat. “Dammit.”

“What!” Zhengting complains, climbing into the van. Chengcheng searches around in his bag, procures his wallet, and hands Justin 50 yuan. “Also; watch your language, Fan Chengcheng.”

“I told you he’d wear another patterned shirt like this,” Justin says, stretching across the aisle to shove his foot under Chengcheng’s thigh, poking at him. “Pay more attention to his closet, man, the supply is neverending.”

“I am _not_ that predictable,” says Zhengting. Chengcheng and Justin share a look, then laugh. Yanjun sticks his head in through the open doors.

“Actually,” Yanjun says primly, “even Linong’s got more wardrobe variety than you, and he was born, what, like, four minutes ago?”

“Betrayal!” declares Zhengting. “I’m sitting in the back with Kunkun, who is nice, and would never gamble on me!” He squeezes down the aisle and plops down next to Xukun in the bench seat, patting his thigh approvingly. “See!”

Xukun bubbles up with a laugh. “Actually…” he starts, trailing off.

Justin turns around in his seat, reaches his hand towards Xukun, palm up. Zhengting throws his hands up in exasperation, slumping in his seat. “Come on!”

Xukun looks over at Zhengting, grinning apologetically. Says, “Sorry, Zhengting-ge,” digging around in his pockets, “I really thought you would have run out of those shirts by now.”

Justin grins. Gets another fifty yuan richer.

 

/

 

Xukun stares at himself in the mirror, his bangs pushed back away from his face, slicked down with sweat. Well, maybe he’s looking past himself, or slightly through, eyes unfocused—he’s tired, but still, he feels restless. The surety of a debut isn’t sticking yet, not quite. He’s got a playlist of every song they’re supposed to perform saved and locked into his phone, plugged into the dance studio speakers.

The arches of his feet ache inside his tennis shoes, and he considers taking them off for a minute before deciding that jumping around in his socks would probably just lead to an injury, and he can’t keep earning his place at the top of the pyramid by just sitting on the sidelines, so—

“You’re still here?”

Xukun meets Zhengting’s eyes through the mirror, halting in his movements. He must have missed the sound of the door opening underneath the bass thrum, buzzing up through his bones. “Yeah,” Xukun says, finally, out of breath. “I just—”

“Practicing alone is bad for you,” Zhengting says firmly, a kind of sureness to it. He shrugs out of his jacket, walks over to stand to the left and a few steps back from Xukun. “If there’s mistakes, you’ll just ingrain them further.”

“Sounds like something Zeren would say.”

“He got it from me,” Zhengting says proudly. His smile glitters, malleable and sincere. In their backwards image, Xukun sees that Zhengting isn’t wearing his usual dancing shoes, instead still in thick-soled leather oxfords he wore for a few pictures, some kind of photoshoot.

Xukun breathes in. Feels like it’s a little hard to face things lately, those things being himself in the mirror, the consequent weight of expectation, and maybe right now, Zhengting, fresh faced and awake alongside him. Xukun presses his heels down inside his sneakers, rolls back onto his toes. Zhengting’s shoes squeak along the floor, unbroken in.

Under the lights, Xukun’s playlists loops.

Starts over.

 

/

 

“What are you doing?”

Zhengting looks up at Xukun from where he’s splayed across the floor of the living room, shrouded in the half-dark. “Stretching before bed,” he says simply, the last syllable spilling out into a yawn. The television lights half his face in pallid blue light, flashing. “It’s the spice of life, you know.”

Xukun rolls his eyes. Zhengting’s legs are spread out over the rug in a wide V, clad in bizarrely patterned green pajama pants that ride up to reveal his ankles and calves when he leans, reaching for one of his feet.

“No facemask?” Xukun says, wry.

“Took it off already,” Zhengting replies, shaking his head. He points his toes, flexing his calves before relaxing again and smiling, patting his face with his hands. “I’m absorbing, now. Aging backwards and all that.”

“Have fun,” Xukun says airily, extending his arms out behind him to ease the tightness in his shoulders, turning on his heels to leave.

Zhengting reaches out, grabs his hand and pulls him down, toppling Xukun to the floor. “You stretch too,” he says firmly, arranging them both so that the soles of their socked feet press together, legs laid out straight. “I hear our nation’s center can’t even touch his toes these days, what will the fans do if  they find out you aren’t taking care of your joints and bones?”

“I can touch my toes,” Xukun complains, crossing his arms. He’s not certain if it’s a lie or the opposite, though the tendons pulled tight at the back of his knees are already burning a little, taught with the shape of his posture.

Zhengting grins, bending in half to reach past their feet, upturned palms hovering above Xukun’s ankles. “Okay,” he says, “if you can grab my hands, I’ll believe you.”

“Fine,” Xukun replies, leaning forward. His fingers overlap with Zhengting’s, but the ache behind his calves and knees won’t let him go any further. “Well!”

Zhengting curls his fingers, hooking them with Xukun’s, and pulls. Xukun yelps, knees bending so that it doesn’t hurt so badly, sliding forward on the rug. He laughs, surprised, then straightens out his legs again, arms rigid as Zhengting draws him further into the stretch. “Ow!” he whines, making a face. Zhengting cackles loudly, adjusting his grip to Xukun’s wrists. He grits his teeth. “Is this why the Yuehua kids avoid you at night?”

“Probably. But beauty is pain!”

Xukun hangs his head and laughs, chin dropped against his chest in defeat. “I don’t feel very pretty, then.”

The front door swings open.

“Dude,” Linkai says, squinting at them both from the threshold. It takes him a moment to decide what he’s seeing go on. “Don’t break Xukun. We need him.”

Hearing that outloud feels both good and bad at equal parts—Xukun still can’t parse it. It’s not like he can hide the stronghold he had on the apex of the pyramid, or pretend he didn’t accumulate as many votes as he did, it’s just that the top of the rankings only has room for one seat, created an empty space between and below him that got harder to cross the longer it stayed there. Need is a complicated word.

“I’m not breaking him,” Zhengting says, breezy. He makes a face at Linkai, mouths _you’re next,_ then leans back another inch further, pulling Xukun along by his fingertips. The undersides of Xukun’s knees ache and stretch and burn. “Just making small improvements.”

Xukun looks at their hands. Back then, the distance felt important, though now it’s harder to remember exactly why—as if it protected Xukun from anything, as if Zhengting as well as several other million people hadn’t watched him cry, seen right through him, even if only for a second.

Xukun’s always known he could push himself further, train harder, collect the hours and hardships like a magpie, hope that it’s enough. He’s always had a weakness for anything that looks bright and glows, things that have a little more shine than they probably deserve. Looking at the bright white row of Zhengting’s teeth inside his smile, the glimmer in his eye, Xukun remembers who he was in the sound stage’s waiting room, how he picked out the _A_ sticker easily, the letter printed in neat blue script, smoothing it down over the blank space on his nametag with a satisfying kind of finality to it, how easily the titles came to him; _center,_ then _leader._ Xukun supposes he hasn’t quite felt like that guy in a while.

Right now, though, with the rug scratching the back of his thighs and Zhengting overextending his hamstrings just another inch further—well—it’s a start.

 

/

 

Linong laughs brightly, sitting on the edge of his twin bed, blankets rumpled. “You’re asking _me_ for advice?”

Xukun reaches his leg out to shove at Linong’s knee with his foot, but it doesn’t do anything except roll him backwards in the desk chair and spin him a little to the left, counterclockwise. “Well it sounds stupid if you say it like that!”

“Mm…” Linong says, trailing off. He tilts his head to the side, looks at the ceiling, then Xukun. “Zhengting is Zhengting. I don’t know. Yanjun’s better at this kind of stuff, don’t you think?”

“Yanjun would never let me live it down!”

Linong laughs again, kicking his heels against the side of his bed. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t get to!” He makes a vague circular gesture with his hand before setting it back down in the blankets again. “Everything about Zhengting is all right there, you know, even when he thinks it isn’t. His intentions are easy to see through.” Linong brightens up instantly, watching Xukun bury his face in a pillow he stole from the bed and try not to scream. He puts a hand down on Xukun’s shoulder, body tilting like he’s trying to wheedle his way back into Xukun’s aborted line of vision. “You seem stressed lately. What did I say?”

 

/

 

Linkai convinces management to take them all out for hotpot, though Xukun has no idea how. Based on Linkai’s smug, grinning face as they filed in through the front door of the restaurant, he imagines it was several days of incessant begging and half serious attempts at puppy eyes that truthfully have only ever worked slightly well with Xingjie.

It’s a bit late on a Friday, the restaurant is busy, and the nine of them got relegated to a horseshoe shaped booth that’s slightly too small, but they fit. Well enough, at least. Xukun made the mistake of sliding in between Justin and Zhengting, and now he has to stay on high alert so he doesn’t accidentally get a black eye when they inevitably start bickering.

Xukun pulls down his facemask, hooking it under his chin, breathing in the smell of the split pot steaming and bubbling at the center of the table while they wait for the second round of trays of ingredients to arrive. Zhengting breaks his new, not-dropped-on-the-floor chopsticks apart, elbow knocking into the side of Xukun’s rib when they split suddenly in his hands. His hair is flat and crimped in odd places from being stuck under a hat all day, and an angry red line is pressed into his cheek where the now removed mask had dug into his skin. Xukun looks sideways at him, then back at the steam unfurling itself in the air, listens to Justin laughing too loudly to be pretty in his periphery.

The waiter arrives, setting shiny silver trays down after removing the old emptied ones, and sliding them smoothly across the table.

Zhengting’s hand slides from Xukun’s shoulder in a line down his back, coils around to his hip, and lingers. It’s the posture he adopts around people he’s comfortable with; tactile, clinging like a cluster of barnacles to the bottom of a stagnant boat. For a second Xukun tells himself Zhengting’s just forgotten he’s not sitting next to Justin, then pushes down on the hope that it really is something else.

The heat from the steam, the warmed air inside the restaurant, and the broth from the spicier side of the pot is enough to excuse the flush, the way his mask tugged beneath his jaw feels a bit like it’s going to start choking him. He snags some celery from Justin’s plate as Zhengting’s hand comes back to his shoulder, gripped around to his collarbone lightly, thumb pressed against a tendon in Xukun’s neck.

“I think you cooked too much,” Xukun says serenely, eyeing the pile of cooked vegetables and beef accumulating on Zhengting’s plate. He’s in the habit of overestimating his appetite, then forcing the rest of his bandmates to finish the inevitable leftovers of his food.

Zhengting pinches his shoulder. “I just have lots of ambition,” he says, chewing. “It’s an admirable quality!” Xukun gives him an unimpressed look. “Fine,” Zhengting hisses, “the king of eating is still Fan Chengcheng, can you please help me get rid of this before Ziyi gives me another lecture about being wasteful!”

Xukun leans back in the booth, has a little fun being smarmy, and shakes his head. “Sorry Zhengting,” he says, “I’m already full.”

“You only had one serving.”

“Yeah, and I’m full!”

Zhengting makes an unhappy face, planting his chin on the flat of Xukun’s shoulder. “C’mon,” he whines. When Xukun pretends to ignore him, he makes an impressively loud kissing sound into his ear, making him jolt, shrink away. The hand returns to his opposite hip, dragging him back closer. Xukun looks at him only through the corners of his vision, flustered, too close, close enough that if he turned his head their noses might bump. He turns anyway, but Zhengting’s already multiplied the distance again, sitting up.

He lifts his brows at Xukun, beef between the ends of his chopsticks in offering. He smiles, like he knows how much Xukun dislikes to be put on the spot like this, thrust under a magnifying glass, rapt with attention. “Open up,” he says, hand swimming closer.

The smaller the distance, the greater the pressure; Zhengting holds back a laugh, waving the beef around in front of him like he’s a petulant toddler, happy to embarrass Xukun. His head tilts expectantly.

Xukun steels himself. Swallows, dryly. Opens his mouth.

 

/

 

Xukun startles slightly at Zhengting appearing in the kitchen doorway, the shape of him familiar from the expanse of his shoulders down to the taper of his waist, silhouetted the same way he is in burning bright stage lights. In Xukun's unadjusted vision, the lightest colors all fog out.

He steps toward the fridge, but looks at Xukun. His nose wrinkles. “Is that pu’er tea?”

Xukun nods, mouth hidden behind the mug. The smell of aged tea is earthy and dark, something like camphor trees, someone told him once, but not everybody finds it particularly pleasant. Xukun once stored his stock of it wrong years ago, and every cup came out smelling like intensely of fish. He coughs on purpose, clearing his throat. “I feel like I’m coming down with something,” he says.

Zhengting peers into the fridge, shaking his head absently. “You’re a worry wart, aren’t you,” he sighs, pulling out a cup of yogurt. He comes to lean against the kitchen island next to Xukun, elbows against the marble, then inches closer, peering in the dark. “Oh, christ, never mind,” he says, grimacing as he catches sight of Xukun’s dark circles and pallid looking complexion before the fridge door closes completely, the pie shaped slice of light it was throwing out shrinking in size until it disappears completely. “Don’t get me sick. I’ll file a lawsuit.”

“Not funny,” Xukun says flatly, but he smiles despite himself. Zhengting laughs lightly, peeling the aluminum foil lid from the yogurt. He smells vaguely of bleach and hair dye, not allowed to wash his hair for twenty-four hours after it got colored at a photoshoot, the chemical aroma sticking in the strands, hairspray locking parts of his fringe in place. He hasn’t even changed out of his street clothes yet, and Xukun doesn’t know why he’s surprised. By now, nobody in this dorm has a reliable or remotely normal sleep schedule; it shouldn’t be odd to realize at least half the residents are awake at any given time. He takes a sip of his tea, inhales the steam, closes his eyes.

It’s quiet for a long time before Zhengting brushes Xukun’s bangs back, places his palm against his forehead, then the back of his hand.

Xukun stills completely, opening his eyes. Zhengting leans closer to him in the dark, studying his face. He flips his hand again, brow furrowing. “You have a fever,” he says, meeting Xukun’s gaze beneath the shadow of his hand, “and you’re clammy. I’m a doctor. You should go to bed. And also stop drinking musty tea.”

“It’s good for you,” Xukun defends, but his voice is weak. He’s more tired than he remembers being when he came out here and brewed this. Zhengting rolls his eyes, but his hand pushes back through Xukun’s slightly sweaty hair. He feels warm all over, through the reason and cause is hard to pinpoint or nail down.

The overhead kitchen light flickers on. Chengcheng manifests in the doorway, Linkai and Justin draped from his shoulders. Xukun had nearly forgotten anyone else even lives here, his thoughts soupy and slow like this, though when he thinks about it he’s pretty sure the video game the three of them had been playing all night is what woke him in the first place.

“You’re taking too long,” Chengcheng says, marching over and stealing the yogurt cup. Linkai and Justin take the opportunity to snag ice cream from the freezer, then all three skitter away and back down the hallway, letting the door slam far too loudly for two in the morning.

“They think I’m not the boss of them,” Zhengting says to no one, waving a hands in the air incredulously. He reaches for the freezer door before it shuts, though, pulling out a blue gel ice pack Xukun has seen him press against his waist after practices, wrap around an ankle, a wrist.

“Technically, aren’t I the boss of you,” Xukun prods, staring down at the swirling colors in his tea, but there’s no force hiding behind it. Zhengting says nothing, draping the icepack around the nape of Xukun’s neck, hovering behind him. The feeling makes him shudder. For the first time in a while, Xukun feels pinpointed by his age; younger than Zhengting, but not particularly old, either. A drop of water rolls down the line of his back, condensation dripping from the plastic past the loose collar of his sleep shirt.

“Survive the night and we can debate it,” Zhengting says, wry, squeezing Xukun’s shoulders.  “With great power comes great responsibility and all that stuff.”

Like this, Xukun is having trouble placing how close Zhengting’s voice is to his ears, head stuffy, blurred and blown out, and as soon as Xukun starts thinking about it, he just can’t stop; he wonders what it would be like if he turned around against the counter, closed his eyes, closed the distance, the pull of it like a song he wants so badly to dance to. He breathes in, subsists on air, ignoring a rattling in his lungs.

Zhengting spins him by the shoulder, and this time when they lock gazes, they can see each other in the light. Xukun feels like he’s waltzed right into tar; can’t take the step away from Zhengting he might’ve months ago. Won’t.

“Go to bed,” Zhengting says, finally, leaning back to get a good look at him. “I don’t wanna spend another minute looking at your sweaty face, and you’ll probably feel better in the morning, anyway.” His gaze lingers, despite the admission.

Xukun takes a step, more ice water rolling down his back, then another. Inside his head, a relationship with Zhengting exists in prospective degrees of certainty, requires vigilance, needs attention. He holds it together with sheer force of will, wants to turn around and say it, forget his tea, leave it cooling on the swirling marble, do something else. Instead he sets his mug on his bedside table, trying not to wake Ziyi, and quietly, quietly, quietly, closes the bedroom door.

 

/

 

Zhengting can fall asleep just about anywhere; facedown on the hardwood practice room floor, upright in the backseat of any car. It shouldn’t feel so—strange, to see him here, catnapping in Xukun’s bed, now.

Xukun pokes him in the stomach, then pinches Zhengting’s cheek when he doesn’t stir. His face crumples in displeasure and he makes a noise, recoling from the sensation. Xukun does it again. Zhengting grabs his wrist, batting it away, blearily opening his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Xukun whispers. He glances across the room at Ziyi, who raises his eyebrows, says nothing. Fuck. He’ll absolutely get interrogated about this later, and Xukun can’t hide anything from the guy in the first place. The cover is already blown.

Zhengting blinks, slowly, still waking up. “The kids kicked me out of our room...said they wouldn’t let me back in unless I knew the password—which I don’t, by the way—and Ziyi said you wouldn’t be back for a while, so—”

“We have a couch, you know.”

“Yes,” Zhengting says, rolling over, voice muffled against Xukun’s pillow. “But—bed.”

“My bed,” Xukun adds. He bites his lip, teeth holding down a flustered smile. Even if its mildly annoying to find his blankets already occupied after such a long day, the feeling is edging on warm, too, feels bright and sticky, thick and slow to move through like poured out jars of honey.

“Any bed,” Zhengting sighs. “These days, I’m not picky.” He curls up, bunching the fabric towards him, creases like rivers that all lead back to his fingers, curled in the sheets. His speech slurs again, the ends and beginnings of words bleeding together, back rising and falling slowly as he breathes.

Xukun smoothes out the blankets and stands, tugging his jacket off and draping it over the nearest desk chair. He takes his contacts out, closing the case with the solution, then presses the switch that turns out the light before heading back towards the bedroom door.

“Where are you going?” Ziyi whispers, sitting up straighter at his desk.

Xukun looks at Ziyi’s shoulder instead of his face, avoiding the thought reading x-ray vision he seems to have when it comes to Xukun’s mind. “The couch,” he manages, voice breezy. Ziyi opens his mouth, then closes it. “Don’t say _anything_ ,” Xukun adds quickly, jabbing his finger at him, trying really hard not to look a little desperate.

Ziyi peers at him over the edge of his laptop’s screen, quirking a brow. “I didn’t,” he says, making a face as he looks back down at his computer, pretending he hasn’t been privy to any of this at all. “And I won’t.”

 

/

 

Yanjun gently pushes Xukun along through the bedroom doorway, ushering him towards his bunk. “You’re a mess,” he says fondly, tipping Xukun over easily into the blankets. “The youths have no alcohol tolerance these days.”

“You’ve only got three years on me,” Xukun complains, consonants blurring together. He rolls until he’s facedown in his pillow, warm all over. Yanjun laughs.

Down the hall, the shower runs distantly; Ziyi had bailed on the drinking games ten or fifteen minutes ago, leaving Zhangjing and Yanjun to goad Xukun on, the time melting down alongside the muffled sound of music playing from Linkai and Linong’s shared room.

“Sleep well,” Yanjun says, sickly sweetly, and Xukun knows he’s being made fun of—he just doesn’t have it in him right now to care. “You’re gonna need it badly tomorrow.”

Xukun groans noncommittally as the door clicks shut and the light from the living room shrinks from a sliver into nothing, though Ziyi’s lamp is still on, it’s dim glow softening Xukun’s vision. Still dressed, he shifts around on top of his sheets, tries to get comfortable. In the process, the palm of his hand slides over something cool, silky. He turns his head to the side. Looks at it.

It’s one of Zhengting’s shirts—he remembers, now, when Justin had come in this morning to borrow a pair of sunglasses before the Yuehuas left for a separate schedule, packing last minute, followed directly by a shirtless Zhengting to tell him to stop screwing around and finish getting his things together already, the silky fabric draped over his forearm. In the ensuing squabble, Justin got pulled into a headlock, the shirt got thrown onto Xukun’s bed, and Justin’s pterodactyl scream woke up both Xukun and Ziyi before eight o’clock. He’d forgotten about it again in the haze of things, until this moment.

Xukun blinks, slow. The longer he looks at the shirt, the clearer the image in his head seems to get; darkly inked letters curving from Zhengting’s hip past the waistband of his jeans, the mosaic of wiry muscle shifting through shadow as he moved in the grey morning light, his laugh, then his voice, the sound of it a little gritty and unused that early in the day, what it might be like to be kissed by him—

Xukun fidgets. Feels sweat beading at the nape of his neck, the small of his back. He’s half hard, he can feel it, uncomfortable with his belt still on, his fly still done. He thinks of Zhengting’s hips, pressing his thumbs into the bones of them, how heavy the weight of him might be. Xukun sighs, hiding his face back in the pillows, and snakes his hand down between his groin and the blankets, palming himself.

Back during filming, Zhengting used to whisper conspiratorially with him, leaning in close so that they couldn’t be heard by the cameras, breath warm against the shell of Xukun’s ear. Now, it’s easy to fill in the blanks, imagine Zhengting’s voice trailing up his jaw, ghosting past his ear, imagine the heel of his hand pushing down on Xukun’s back, sliding up the dipped valley of his spine, laying on top of him, beside him, fingernails against the scalp, asking if it’s good enough, if he wants more. Xukun groans, quietly, grinding down against the flat of his hand. Alcohol pressurizes the inside of his head, makes it ache, hard to think.

Down the hall, the water shuts off, and the sound of the shower curtain’s rings scraping along the rod leaks out into the hall, makes it all the way through the dense wooden door of Xukun and Ziyi’s shared room, just loud enough to be heard.

Xukun’s got no idea what Ziyi does with his hair when he gets out of the shower, but it usually takes forever. He’s got time, he thinks—definitely at least ten minutes—before he’s no longer alone in this room. The inside of his skull feels like a bundle of static, brims with white noise. He squeezes his eyes shut.

Flushing red, Xukun lifts his hips, then pulls his belt loose from the loops on his jeans.

 

/

 

“Xukun,” Yanjun says, “if it’s something you feel you can’t say, it’s probably the thing you need to say most.”

Xukun pouts, slumping in his seat. He was hoping Yanjun might have something less intelligent to offer him, maybe let him revel in how childish and avoidant he’s being, but he just makes the same disgustingly cute face back at him across the table, smarmy. Xukun picks at his breakfast, shoving congee around in the bowl, doesn't even react when Yanjun reaches across the table with his spoon and takes some of it happily.

“I don’t like it when you’re right,” Xukun whines.

“I get it,” Yanjun says, patting him placatingly on the shoulder. “I’m so wise, so handsome—it’s hard to compete. We can’t all be the total package.”

“Don’t give him too much credit,” Zhangjing says, face flat, staring at Xukun. “He stole that line from a drama he’s been binging on his phone.”

Yanjun blanches. Loudly, Xukun laughs.

 

/

 

“Sorry, do I what?” Zhengting says.

Xukun wants to melt into the floor and die. The courage to confess had already disappeared halfway through saying the sentence the first time, and he definitely can’t repeat it, now.

“Don’t make that face,” Zhengting complains. “I just didn’t hear you! C’mon!”

“Do you think people like me?” Xukun says, chewing on his lip, which is a pretty poor substitute for what he’d been trying to say in the first place. He feels himself flush, immediately grateful for the layers of makeup that work hard to hide it.

“You’re the nation’s center,” Zhengting says plainly, “of course people like you.”

“No, I mean…” Xukun trails off. Scratches at his ankle with the blunt nail of his thumb, cross legged on the scuffed practice room floor. “I didn’t show them everything,” he says. “What if they don’t like the rest of me?”

Zhengting grabs Xukun’s face between his palms, turns his head this way and that, inspecting his skull. “Did you hit your head, Cai Xukun? Become concussed?”

Xukun looks away, feeling more embarrassed now than he had before. He shakes his head, though it’s a bit difficult against the surety of Zhengting’s grip. Zhengting drops his hands.

“What’s gotten into you?” he says. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me. Tell me what to say. I’ll stroke your ego if it mean you’ll be normal again.”

Xukun covers his face with his hands and makes a pathetic noise into the skin of his palms. Zhengting jostles him, arm around his shoulders.

“Am I gonna have to bend over backwards to get this out of you?” Zhengting asks, grinning. He leans closer and blows cool air into Xukun’s ear. “‘Cause I can, you know. If I strain my waist I’ll be blaming it on you. Live television exposé, getting the band back together, I can already see it now...”

Xukun can’t help it. He laughs, feels like one of Zhengting’s underlings, being babied and coddled a bit like this, collapses flat back onto the floor, flustered. Zhengting shoves at his side, rolling him over.

“Hey,” Zhengting barrels on, leaning over him, patting Xukun’s back. “If it’s any consolation, I like you, and I’m pretty sure I count as a person, too.”

 

/

 

“You look stupid,” Zhengting says.

“Wow,” Xukun replies. “Thanks so much.” He’s probably referring to the various and colorful crocodile clips currently adorning Xukun’s hair, placed by one of the stylists temporarily for reasons he has yet to understand, but the accusation is fair enough. He does look kind of ridiculous.  

“But I’m glad you’re here. This couch has no pillows, and I’m sleepy. Come sit down.”

“You’re going to use me as a cushion?” Xukun asks, feigning incredulity. “I’ve lost weight lately, I’ll have you know. I don’t think my thigh is gonna be very comfortable.”

Zhengting pulls on Xukun’s arm, dragging him down. Outside of the dressing room, a camera shutter clicks in quick succession, and the director tells Ziyi he’s only getting ten more shots, and he should make them count. “It’s you or this wooden arm rest, okay? Be grateful you’re Zhu Zhengting’s chosen one.”

“Sounds temporary,” says Xukun. Zhengting nods sagely, already moving to lay down across the couch. He hooks a hand under Xukun’s thigh, dragging it closer, presses his ear to the fabric of Xukun’s catastrophically distressed jeans, then closes his eyes.

“It’s a precarious position,” Zhengting sighs, fidgeting further, trying to get comfortable. “I’m very fickle. You should guard the title safely.”

Xukun’s heart slams inside his chest, skin burning beneath the fabric trapped beneath Zhengting’s cheek, his hand. He wonders if Zhengting can feel him staring, feel how the impermanence of everything changes face, takes root inside his head. Contracts, expiration dates, Xukun hates it but he chose it, too, chose it over everything else he’d had offered to him.

He finds, suddenly, that he has no idea what to do with his hands. He looks at Zhengting’s ear, his throat, the slim line of his shoulder into the jut  his collarbone. Zhengting’s breathing slows incrementally, face nudging further into the muscle of Xukun’s thigh.

“You’re going to ruin your hair,” Xukun manages, voice tight.

The idea is simple; he can see the future, when the group disbands and it’s just him alone again. He knows what that looks like—lived it, twice. He can see the future, even the one without Zhengting, its just that he doesn’t want it yet.

Zhengting cracks an eye, the corner of his lip tilting up likes it’s tied to a string, rolls onto his back, looking up at Xukun from below. “You’ll fix it for me,” he says, coy, like he’s gone and said something clever, “won’t you?”

 

/

 

“Hey,” Zhengting whispers, poking Xukun in the ribs. “Hey, Kunkun, wake up.”

Xukun blinks, sits up, and stretches out the knot of sore muscle thats formed in his neck. When his vision clears, he finds himself staring up at Zhengting’s shadowy face, leaned over him and one of the recording studio’s worn in chairs up against the back wall. He’d fallen sideways in it a little after falling asleep, watching the lights in the sound table blink and flicker as Zhengting slowly worked his way through line after line, lyrics blurring together in Xukun’s increasingly unconscious head.

“The managers are gathering everything the kids left behind up, and we’re meeting them at the van. You alive in there?” A flick to Xukun’s forehead, right between his eyes. He whines, rubbing at it with the heel of his hand. “I’m not gonna carry you all the way there.”

Xukun groans, pulls on Zhengting’s forearm to help himself stand, then gathers up his bag, phone charger, jacket. Zhengting waits impatiently in the studio doorway, leaning against the frame. The walk down to the van waiting out front is short and dark, the building about to close down for the night, and the engine idles beneath the overhang. Zhengting slides the door open and makes his way towards the bench seat in the back, the two remaining staff settling into the drivers side and passengers seat, three empty rows left between them.

When the van moves, the floor vibrates. Zhengting leans his head back against the cold glass of the window, the colors of him dissipating into a silhouette against the streetlights. He looks at Xukun carefully, and even in the blanketing darkness, Xukun can feel it. “Why didn’t you just go back with the others, before?”

Xukun swallows, feels like a bug trapped inside an empty, overturned glass. It would be easy to lie, say, _it’s bad press, I’m the leader, what would that look like, you know?_ but instead he flounders, fumbling for the words. “I feel like we aren’t close enough,” he says, mostly on accident, which is, in fact, a pretty poor substitute for _I want to be close to you._

Zhengting sits up straight, leaning forward across the gap towards Xukun, analyzing his face. He squints, the reflection of a corner store they're passing’s neon sign reflecting backwards in the whites of his eyes. “You’re lying,” he says, like he’s delighted about it, tilting his head. “Why?”

Xukun colors, thankful for the dark. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice caught in his throat, the obstruction the size and color of a closed, bloody fist. “I wanted to stay. Isn’t that enough?”

Zhengting’s eyes widen incrementally, curving with the hint of an embarrassed smile. He slaps Xukun’s knee, chokes on a laugh.

“Hey,” says the manager, turning around in the passenger seat, elbow hooked around the headrest. “You two didn’t have dinner yet, right? We’re stopping in a second to grab something for the both of you to eat.”

Zhengting gives the manager a thumbs up and a nod, then turns his gaze back on Xukun. He wants to sink into his sweatshirt and die, pull the last few sentences he spoke back inside his mouth. The engine shuts off beneath them. Silence.

“You guys can stay here—it’ll be a frenzy if you’re recognized. We’ll be right back.” The front row doors open, close. The van shakes briefly with the force of it. Zhengting fidgets, pulling his heel out of his shoe and shoving it back in again, folding the back of it over.

“Well?” Xukun blurts, embarrassed, now, hung out to dry and waiting for a response. “It’d be really great if you could turn me down gently!” If he was feeling more childish he might tug his hood up over his head and pull on the strings, but even the thought of doing _that_ is more humiliating than the situation at hand, right now.

Zhengting tugs on strands of his hair, antsy. “I—” he starts, stops. “I think you know that I’m too bad of a liar for that.”

Xukun’s skin feels like it’s about to burn right off him. “What?” His voice sounds too high and tight, even in his head, but the question bursts out of him anyway.

Frantically, Zhengting waves his hands around in front of his face like he’s swatting a fly, then makes an X with his forearms. “I’m not saying it again!”

Xukun curls his fingers around each of Zhengting’s wrists, uncrossing them, revealing Zhengting’s face that’s hidden behind the crux, eases him closer. He glances sideways at the doors, back towards Xukun’s mouth, then lingers.

Xukun inches nearer, releasing Zhengting’s wrists, reaches a palm out to his hip, the feel of it in his hand a bit like a seashell, rigid, smoothed out. Zhengting makes a flustered sound and averts his gaze out of habit. When his eyes find their way back to Xukun’s, they’re sky-wide, blinking.

The inside of Xukun’s chest feels like a mess someone’s been meant to be cleaning for a large, long while. He leans his weight forward, other hand placed on the seat fabric between Zhengting’s knees.

“Xukun—” Zhengting starts, and the van shakes again in the wind created by passing cars. His phone lights up and vibrates, falling from the seat to the floor.

Xukun looks down at it and blows air from his nose in lieu of a laugh, holding down his smile with his teeth. “ _Zhengzheng?_ ” he reads, the nickname appearing on the bright white screen, lined up at the beginning of a message beneath Linong’s full name as a groupchat notification, teasing. "Seriously?"

Zhengting wrinkles like an overloved cat. “Don’t call me that,” he complains, voice pitching higher, higher. “You’re ruining it.”

“Ruining what?”

Zhengting scrunches up his face further, sighing petulantly. “This,” he says, gesturing between them. “We don’t have a lot of time.” He nods his head towards the windows facing the storefront. “Takeout is fast at this place, remember? Justin and Linkai come here all the time.”

Xukun hums in mild agreement, and steadies himself, again. Kissing Zhengting is the path of least resistance, and he follows it easily, hurrying their mouths together. Zhengting’s lips part simply, and his hand only manages to find its way to the crest of Xukun’s rib cage, flattening lightly there, the muscles beneath it bunching and releasing under his touch.

Xukun presses against him, knocking knees. Pulls back with a soft pop, a blurry pink haze washed across his existence before he blinks it away. The front doors open, close, and the greasy smell of takeout fills the van, thin plastic bags crinkling.

Zhengting stands and squeezes his way up the aisle to take the bags, agreeing that no, they wont eat in the van, seriously, they promise.

Still, though, Zhengting quietly pops open the lid of one container and stuffs an entire dumpling into his mouth, chewing happily. Xukun would eat one too, or take the opportunity in the dark to kiss Zhengting again, but the manager is definitely eying them suspiciously in the rearview mirror now, after the unsubtle sound of the takeout boxes opening, and Zhengting, like most things, is a flavor Xukun likes better when he can taste it in his mouth.

 

/

 

“Xukun!” Zhangjing yells, standing with his arms crossed in the lobby doorway. “You’re gonna make us late!”

Xukun jogs our from the elevator, lugging his duffel bag up onto his shoulder. “We’re right on time! It’s fine!” He smiles sheepishly at Zhangjing, who eyes his still-wet hair with a disapproving look, but smiles and relents eventually, ushering him up the narrow stairs onto the bus.

“He showered,” Zhangjing announces with distaste as his foot meets the top step. “He made us wait because he was  _showering. Again._ ”

There’s a collective groan from the half-awake masses filling the seats on the minibus, but Xukun just laughs. They should all get used to it, honestly. He’s the leader, and showering whenever he wants is law. He’s about to take his usual seat alone in an empty row towards the back, but he catches Zhengting’s eyes as they flicker away from him, staring casually out the window even as his ears turn pink. Zhangjing nudges a frozen Xukun down the aisle, his patience for any time-wasting antics already worn remarkably thin.

Empty seats next to strangers are always considered taken. Xukun heaves his bag into the storage shelves above the row containing Zhengting, who pulls an earphone out as he looks to him, opens his mouth but says nothing. Xukun doesn’t ask, just sits.

Wanting things isn’t the worst thing he can do, Xukun supposes. Zhengting offers him an earbud.

Maybe having them isn’t so bad, either.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading !! (beating heart emoji)
> 
> ash i hope this is the dirt you wished to see in the world 
> 
> feel free to come find me on twitter @hoshiologyphd or @hochitown !! (its on private, follow reqs are ok!! im not picky lol)
> 
> okay bye!!!!!!!!


End file.
